It is a long time since the clandestine drum tapped out the Morse “V for Victory”, and the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth heralded the BBC broadcasts to occupied Europe. It is also 15 years since the benighted Soviet satellites were forced to tune in to London for unbiased news in their own languages. Communism has collapsed, Eastern Europe is free and Poles, Czechs and Hungarians no longer need the scratchy, whistling short-wave lifeline to freedom. Nostalgia may be howling through the corridors at Bush House. But the BBC’s decision to switch off ten foreign language radio services and use the £20 million to launch — again — an Arabic television channel is right.

Broadcasting is a powerful arm of diplomacy, a fact recognised by the Foreign Office, which funds the BBC World Service. Over the years imitators have tried the formula with mixed success: the crass Radio Moscow and Radio Tirana in Cold War days were ludicrous; the clutch of Arabic satellite TV channels now dominating the Middle East airwaves hardly provide a dispassionate view of the world.

Where will reliable, unbiased news pack the greatest diplomatic punch? Unquestionably, in Iraq and the Arab world. A total of £20 million is not a lot to go head to head with al-Jazeera (itself about to challenge the BBC in English). But if the BBC can get it right, avoiding the rows over content that scuppered its first short-lived Arabic television service, and — please! — offering something livelier than the dreary BBC World, it could justify its existence. The BBC began foreign broadcasts in 1938 — in Arabic. The need for news remains.